Summary: 1126 JOURNAL OF MICROELECTROMECHANICAL SYSTEMS, VOL. 18, NO. 5, OCTOBER 2009
Analysis of Hybrid Electrothermomechanical
Microactuators With Integrated Electrothermal
and Electrostatic Actuation
Aravind Alwan and Narayana R. Aluru
Abstract--The goal of this paper is to integrate electrothermal
and electrostatic actuations in microelectromechanical systems
(MEMS). We look at cases where these two types of actuation
are intimately coupled and argue that such integrated electrother-
momechanical (ETM) microactuators have more advantages than
pure electrothermal or electrostatic devices. We further propose
a framework to model hybrid ETM actuation to get a consistent
solution for the coupled mechanical, thermal, and electrical fields
in the steady state. Employing a Lagrangian approach, the inho-
mogeneous current conduction equation is used to describe the
electric potential, while the thermal and displacement fields are
obtained by solving the nonlinear heat conduction equation and by
performing a large deformation mechanical analysis, respectively.
To preserve numerical accuracy and reduce computational time,
we also incorporate a boundary integral formulation to describe